Committing to Coverage

By Chris Roush
October 8, 2008

The Wichita Eagle’s business editor Dan Loving and the paper’s editor, Sherry Chisenhall, are countering what’s going on in the rest of business journalism. They’re either crazy, or brilliant. I’d lean toward the latter.

While virtually every other metro daily has cut its news hole for business coverage in the past two years, the Eagle has actually added to its business coverage, creating standalone sections on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

“I’ve watched as one newspaper after another condenses or collapses the business section,” Chisenhall told me. “I don’t know the factors in their market that drive those decisions. But I know that for us, we were under-valuing the very engine that drove the community’s health and quality of life. It was a big bet, and if it had proved to be wrong, I suppose we’d be killing the section, too. But nothing has told us we’re wrong.

“All indicators to me are that there is a strong appetite in the community for news that is for and about business.”

To understand how this happened, let’s go back to 2004, when Chisenhall became the paper’s editor after a stint as its managing editor. As part of her pitch for the top spot, she gave the publisher a list of priorities for news. At the top of the list was deeper and broader business coverage. A memo detailing the paper’s strategy that Chisenhall shared with me noted that a business news section should function like a sports section for business people: keeping score, including numbers, telling stories about success against the competition.

Chisenhall redirected some open positions into the business news department, adding two veteran reporters to the staff, and worked with the ad department to launch a Thursday standalone business section in September 2006 called “Business Today.” It was the paper’s first standalone business section. Previously, business news had been in Metro.

“I had many, many conversations with key business leaders, and we held some focus groups,” said Chisenhall. “I became firmly convinced that the business community here was being under-served in news coverage. The “Business Today” section was an immediate success, both in terms of news coverage and advertising revenue.”

Loving, who at that time was an assistant business editor, said the paper’s business coverage changed from focusing on consumer issues to attacking hardcore business news.

“At that time, we decided to write less to a general audience and focus more on the Wichita business community,” says Loving. “With that, we typically don’t write about consumer news and personal finance. Those stories are usually written by the news staff and run in the A section or within our metro coverage. What we want to be is an essential read for business people, kind of a niche publication within the paper. We realize that not everybody is going to be interested in what we write. That’s OK.”

The strategy worked so well that last month; the Eagle added two more “Business Today” sections, on Tuesday and Wednesday. From Friday through Sunday, business news remains inside the Metro section and isn’t called “Business Today.” There is no Monday section. Still, the paper progressed from no standalone business sections to three in the past two years. No other daily has made such a move.

At a time when news about business and the economy seems to be vitally important to everyone, it’s nice to see at least one paper that understands that its readers need such coverage. Business news is THE story for the next five years. Yes, the Eagle dropped its stock listings this year, but that space went to more business news stories, not to save on newsprint costs.

As I heard from Chisenhall and Loving about their reasoning, their thinking reminded me of what some business experts advise corporations: When your competition does one thing, you do the opposite. You zig when they zag.

Said Chisenhall: “I’ll admit that we at times have that feeling of driving north while watching all the other cars heading south, and we think, ‘Are we missing something?’ I don’t think so. I think we’re on to something.”

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism